Youth Engagement in European Language Preservation, 1900-2020

ended

YEELP is the first in-depth, comparative, transnational and interdisciplinary study of the intersection between European youth and the preservation of minority or regional European languages in the period since 1900. The project focuses on three languages of differing statuses and rates of usage – Irish, Welsh and Catalan – and it unites two growing fields of contemporary scholarship: the study of youth, and the study of language preservation. In the study of minority and regional language preservation, the roles and voices of youths – those between 12 and 19 years of age – have been consistently overlooked. In order to address this fundamental gap in contemporary research, this project takes a multifaceted approach to the intersection between youth and language. It does so at a critical period for the study of endangered European languages, with several languages in decline and some facing extinction. Until youth is included in considerations of language preservation, we will not be able to answer the question of why some languages thrive while others die out. Through four innovative methodological strands: a study of second-level educational policy (youth as object); an examination of extracurricular language initiatives (youth as agent); an analysis of young adult literature (youth as subject); and the provision of a forum through which the voice of youths themselves will be heard (youth as advocate), the project will explore how bilingual youths have adapted to, and engaged with, two languages and often two cultures. The project is potentially groundbreaking: through its historical, literary and grassroots approach of engaging with youths themselves, the project aims to substantially extend the state-of-the-art. YEELP offers a model for European research in the fields of the history of youth, language studies, young adult literature and beyond, while also informing international minority and regional language planning into the future.